Group of young men heads west (to the then-wilderness) for a year or two of adventure
Find gold and silver near Santa Fe
Send it back east for safe-keeping, namely by burying it in Virginia
Leave an encrypted description of the treasure, its location, and the families of its owners
with an inn keeper in case they don’t come back
Indeed they don’t come back; inn keeper opens the box 20-odd years later, and after
another 20 or so passes it on to the author of the pamphlet
Treasure totals around 4 tons of gold and silver, worth around $56 million today
Do you believe it’s real? Why or why not?
Logistical considerations: could they really move tons of treasure across North America?
According to internet information you looked up, a wagon such as used slightly later on
the Oregon Trail could carry around 6 tons
And a team of 2 horses could pull about 12 (but there was some scepticism about this number)
Social dynamics considerations: would a group of 30 people plus hired helpers really have
trusted their treasure to a small group, and then all have disappeared without any word
beyond this one pamphlet?
Scientific considerations
According to information you found on Wikipedia, analysis of the language used in the
pamphlet suggests that both it and Beale’s letters were written by the same person
And testing the Declaration of Independence as a key on the undecrypted notes shows some
patterns highly unlikely to appear by chance, e.g., almost the entire alphabet in almost
perfect order